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Friday, August 24, 2007

I went to see an old friend last week, it has been close on to twenty years since I saw him last. Like me, he’d been through a mix-master of changes, traveling the globe, living with Papaji in India and setting out on his work which he’s now been at in excess of fifteen years.

There are some things that define us more than others; our unique inclinations, how we react to the circumstances of life and the people who love and appreciate us as well as the people who do not. You can tell a lot about someone by the kinds of praise and criticism they garner and the people from which it arises. You can tell very little about those who garner neither. One hopes to arrive there but it is a rare thing, within the boundaries of the game. Perhaps I should have said that one can tell a great deal about someone by how they handle criticism and praise, gain and loss.

There were a number of people at the house when I arrived; the sort of people you hope you will meet in your day to day- bright, articulate, intelligent and most importantly, welcoming. Then, after about an hour they faded off to their various industries and Zac and I had some hours.

Well, I’m not going to talk about Zac, that’s his job. I want to talk about what people do with their lives and how they feel about it. Zac mentioned stress and how life and circumstance infallibly create it for you if you allow it to. It’s human nature to ‘tense up’.

Life is basically simple; what I mean is- succeeding or failing at life is predicated on a simple relationship between yourself and your surroundings. No matter how complex ‘we’ make it, it really comes down to a few things; are you paying attention or not, are you tensing or releasing, are you aware that there is only one mind or do you think you have your own, do you think you know or do you know that you do not know, do you want things or do you want awareness?

If you’re not paying attention, if you are tensing- stressing, if you think you have a separate mind, if you think you know and you’d like to have a lot of things then you are in the game and also, as the Brits say, “on the game”. Defining ‘the game’ to people involved in the game usually means that you are going to run into people who think listening is waiting for their turn to talk. They’re not bad people, they’re just in the game and as a result they cannot help gaming you after they have gamed themselves.

What do you value? That’s what it comes down to. What do you hold dear? What do you aspire to? What compels you more than anything else? That’s what you are. You’ve heard the phrase, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” What’s that mean? What the ‘I’ thinks is based on what it believes itself to be. You are what you think you are. Change that and presto you are someone else. But that’s still a game. It might be a better and more enjoyable game but it’s still a game.

There’s something behind the ‘I’ that thinks “I”. The one who thinks ‘I’ is a projection of the thing behind it which uses it to experience life. It’s the spirit in search of experience. God, the thing behind the thinking ‘I’ is dreaming and that dream is your life. Of course, you don’t have to call it God. You don’t have to build a religion around it. It’s going to be there no matter what you call it and regardless of whether you put fruits and flowers on a rock or offer up any living thing as a burning sacrifice. It’s going to be there despite the Pope’s swishing through the cathedrals of the world, despite Buddhists with cellphones and no matter what happens in the world. It’s going to be there. It was all that was there before there was anything else and it will remain when all is gone. It’s the only thing that is real to begin with; just as when a movie ends the white screen remains.

It’s just behind the ‘I’ thinking. It’s just behind the gamer in the body suit. Nearly everybody is a gamer in a bodysuit and nobody knows anything except the people who know they don’t know- and that can deepen and deepen. So... everything anyone tells you is their version of how the game works. Everything everyone is doing is a definition of what they want from the game and it’s all based on what they find valuable.

If everything you see around you is perishable then it has only relative value. Merv Griffin isn’t rich anymore. Soon George H. Bush won’t be powerful. And everyone won’t remain pretty though some may become beautiful. You will lose everything you worked for and everything you possess except for the experience of the life in which these things came and went as did you. But you’ll be back.

You will be back and placed into the hands of those you encountered previously under similar circumstances with the roles reversed. The reason things are the way they are today is because of the way they were before. That’s the point of the “last farthing”.

In this world there are the billions of personalities that think ‘I’. Then there are the archetypes where the thing behind the ‘I’ thinks ‘I’ in a particular way. Usually, whatever person that archetype might have been in former times, has learned to get out of the way. It should be remembered that every master and adept who can ‘horse’ an archetype has a history that contains many secret shames. Occasionally the something previous to the mind that thinks ‘I’ decides to make an appearance. This doesn’t happen often but it does happen. That’s a good time to be in the game if you have gotten tired of playing the game.

The billions of personalities exist in major subdivisions called ‘rays’. These are similar to the rays that you get when white light passes through a prism. You could think of this world as a prism. You could think of the Sun. People on their different rays have a natural attraction and antipathy to those on their rays and other rays. You might ‘think’ about how blue and yellow make green. This whole dichotomy can get very complex. The thing is, you don’t need to understand these things, although some people very much want to. All you have to do is realize that something is behind the ‘I’ that thinks ‘I’ and... melt. Over a long period of time, experience will soften you and the something behind will melt you but... that is a long time.

Becoming as a little child is how you begin to melt immediately. It does make you very vulnerable and your defense mechanism that is a part of the mind that thinks ‘I’ can get very antsy about this. There’s a lot of booga-booga, noises in the night and those predators that eat children. The thing is, the something behind the ‘I’ that thinks ‘I’ is also behind that ‘I’ in the predators and everything else. It’s a matter of trust and a certain kind of trust that only a child can have.

The principal thing to have is an understanding that everything is under control. It doesn’t matter how it looks. Everything is under control. Every time appearances take control, stress appears, so... you have to melt the moment you feel it. After awhile it gets automatic. It doesn’t become automatic in two weeks or over a weekend with some Reiki master. What’s the point of any masterly appearing force outside of you if everything is already under the control of the something behind the ‘you’ thinking ‘I’?

Just about everyone and everything is going to tell you something different because they are all within the game structure. It is an amazing thing to realize that something you can’t see is watching you all the time. You are an extension of it. You came out of it just as you did from your mother’s womb. You can expect the same thing from it that you can from your mother or, you can set out on your own; press forward with stress through every accomplishment you can imagine until you are obliged to give up or... melt right now.

Suffer from the stress of striving until you fade away or cease to suffer by melting away altogether. Be in charge and fail or accept the presence and you are infinite. “I’ is a point of view from a moment that has already passed beyond you; it is the nature of ‘I’ to reside outside the moment for as long as the ‘I’ exists.